Civil
society is a domain parallel to but separate from the state. It is a
realm where citizens associate according to their own interests and wishes. It
is “the realm of organized social life that is voluntary, self-generating,
largely self-supporting, and bound by a legal order or set of shared values.”
Outside of their households, the members of society form a large variety of
intermediary organizations for the purpose of safeguarding and promoting their
interests. There is no unanimity on the question of which types of social
organizations should fall within the scope of civil society. Yet, conventionally
organizations that are considered to be parts of civil society include
churches, neighborhood associations, private charities, grassroots groups and
local clubs - all those social organizations that are open, voluntary,
self-generating, autonomous from the State, and yet bound by a legal order.
Civil society does include independent mass media and the broader field of
autonomous cultural and intellectual activity. The Universities, theatres, film
societies, publishing houses and the social think tanks are important
components of civil society. In fine, it is an intermediary phenomenon standing
between the private sphere and the State. Civil Society needs to be
distinguished from the broader concept of ‘society’ in general, as it involves
behaving and acting collectively in a public sphere, to express their
interests, ideas and preferences to achieve collective goals and make demands
on the state. Thus all of social life is not subsumed in civil society.
Parochial society represented by individual and family life and inward-looking
group activity such as religious worship, spirituality etc. does not fall
within civil society. Similarly, economic society in the form of profit making
enterprise of individual business firms is outside the scope of civil society.
Also, civil society needs to be distinguished from political society
represented, in a democracy, by political parties and campaign groups and
organizations that primarily aspire for winning control of the state. Democracy
and civil society are twins: they are integrally related to each other. A
healthy liberal democracy needs the support of a public “that is organized for
democracy, socialized to its norms and values, and committed not just to its
myriad narrow interests but to larger, common civic end”. To quote Larry
Diamond, “such a civil public is only possible with a vibrant ‘civil society’.”
One has to trace back in this context to Alexis de Tocqueville whose classic
writings on American politics laid the foundation of democracy-civil society
nexus thesis. Tocqueville thought, America’s democracy was sustained
by the richness and diversity of its voluntary associations. In his view,
voluntary associations assisted in the development of democratic values such as
trust, tolerance and compromise. New generations of neo-Tocquevillians,
prominent among who is Robert Putnam, have, since the 1990s, revived the
concept of civil society as the bedrock of democracy. Putnam’s work on the
political development of the Italian regions - the prosperous North vis-à-vis
the impoverished South - sought to explain superior institutional performance
in the former in terms of flourishing ‘social capital’ which stands for
“features of social organization such as trust, norms and networks”. The
propensity of individuals to join private, voluntary associations, according to
Putnam, contributes to the effectiveness of democracy because of its ‘internal’
and ‘external’ consequences. Internally, associations “install habits of
cooperation, solidarity, and public spiritedness”. Externally, a dense network
of secondary associations “contributes to effective social collaboration”. The
Putnam thesis is simply this: where there is no social capital, democracy could
not flourish. For the most comprehensive theoretical assessment of the virtues
of civil society in the context of democratic transition and consolidation, one
has to refer to Larry Diamond’s recent work on Developing Democracy.
Civil society, in Diamond’s view, serves the “development, deepening and
consolidation of democracy”. As Diamond explains the process, civil society
provides the basis for the limitation of state power, supplements the role of
parties in stimulating political participation, increases the political
efficacy and skill of democratic citizens, educates the masses in democracy,
structures multiple channels, beyond the political party, for articulating,
aggregating, and representing interests, empowers the powerless to advance
their interests, generates a wide range of cross-cutting interests, mitigates
thereby the polarities of political conflict, recruits and trains new political
leaders, develops techniques for conflict mediation and resolution, gives
citizens respect for the state and positive engagement with it, and facilitates
the spread of ideas essential for economic reform.
Diamond has, however, laid down certain
conditions that must be fulfilled for civil society to perform the democracy
building functions. First, a stable democracy has a good prospect if civil
society does not contain “maxima list, uncompromising interest groups or groups
with anti-democratic goals and methods”. Second, another feature of a strong
civil society is what Diamond has called the “level of organizational
institutionalization”. As he argues, “where interests are organized in a
structured, stable manner, bargaining and the growth of cooperative networks
are facilitated”. Third, the other important requirement is the “internally
democratic character” of organizations as defined by “decision-making,
leadership selection, accountability and transparency”. Following Diamond’s
presents, five distinct features of civil society which can be identified as
under: Civil society is concerned with public ends rather than private ends. Civil society and state are related to
each other in such a way that it does not seek to win control over the state.
To reform the structure of power rather than to take power themselves as
organizations is the goal of civil society. Civil
society encompasses pluralism and diversity.
Any organization that seeks to monopolies power and occupy the political
space as a monopolist disallowing all competitors, violates the pluralistic and
market oriented nature of civil society. Civil society does not seek to
represent the complete set of interests of a person or a community. This
characteristic follows from what has been stated above. Profusion of different
organizations and individuals having multiple organizational ties are clear
signs of healthy civil society functioning.
Civil society, should distinguished from the more clearly democracy
enhancing phenomenon of civic community. Putnam’s model of civil community
along with the idea of social capital is both a broader and narrower concept
than civil society: “broader, in that it encompasses all manner of
associations; narrower in that it includes only associations structured
horizontally around ties that are more or less mutual, cooperative,
symmetrical, and trusting”. Putnam, like Tocqueville, has sensitized us to the
importance of associational life in general; but civil society is a much more
refined concept that distinguishes it from the much wider and more general
arena of associational life. It needs to be emphasized, in this context, that
“the key to constructing a civic community is not whether an organization has
an explicitly civic (public) or political purpose.”
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